Political Quotes

“I would like to review some of the points we put in that language which is the law. It, first, requires the President to come forward on July 15, which he did. He submitted an assessment of the benchmarks. It further directed that General Petraeus be here in September with Ambassador Crocker. It further called upon the new organization which was created in this most recent appropriations bill, again originating, this part of the legislation, on the floor of the Senate. We put together a requirement that there be an independent study group of the Iraq security forces. We have periodically through the years received reports from the Department of Defense describing how many battalions of the Iraqi forces are trained, how many are equipped, how many are ready to take the point by themselves, how many are dependent on U.S. forces. That is quite an accumulation of data.”